In Proverbs 4:23, God warns us to guard our hearts, and as spiritual people in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know the importance of heeding this warning. Guarding something means you’re on ‘watch’ duty. You watch what goes in and you watch what comes out. The only reason why anyone would guard anything to this degree is to protect it from something harmful. Relationships are very important to us, and they are even more important to God. He wants us to have a good relationship with Him, and He also wants us to have good relationships with others. This is especially true when it comes to marriage. Whether you’re single desiring marriage, currently in a marriage, or in a relationship that might lead to it, guarding your heart is critical to preserving the strength of your union.
For a person that hasn’t yet developed an intimate or close relationship with Heavenly Father, they might think that relationships are a free-for-all in which anything goes. They might be leading relationships with their own definition of love, without having sought the Creator who is love Himself. There are a ton of devastating issues that arise out of this take-it-as-it-comes approach about love, but the major one is the potential destruction it causes to the heart. Not just to our own hearts, but to the hearts of others.
Marriage is a goal that most single people have and for good reason. Marriage is God’s institution, and He intended it to form a cord in which the man, the woman, and Him become one through His Son, Jesus Christ. Intimacy binds this cord and keeps it strong. This is one of the reasons that a person who desires to have multiple love relationships, and to have them with multiple people simultaneously, is sometimes a very fragmented and unstable person. They have robbed themselves of the life-giving privilege to form the cord God has ordained. They are living beneath their privilege because they have refused to regard commitment in the place of honor that God intended. The very nature of love is to hold a person in such high admiration that their well-being is the highlight of your fulfillment. Every woman and every man deserve to know this level of love, and without God living through us, we are incapable of giving it.
In 1Sameul 16:7(NLT), we learn an extremely impactful truth about how God sees us. In this verse, God told His prophet, Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” The heart is the innermost part of our being, and God looks at it to see what we’re storing in it. He looks at it to see if we have made our hearts fertile soil for His Word to take root and grow. If our hearts are hardened towards God, He cannot prosper us in our relationships or in life. This makes Him sad, because He wants to prosper, love, and keep us safe throughout our lives.
It’s crazy not to want a quality relationship where you value the person you’re committed to and they equal your capacity and willingness to love and be committed to you. Understand that Heavenly Father is the glue that holds this kind of love together. He protects it from enemy attack and keeps us stable while our unity grows. It’s also crazy to think that our relationships will not come under attack by the devil at some point. In 1Peter 5:8(NLT), God warns, “Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” Every time I read this verse, I’m reminded of a theologian who told me that he didn’t believe in the devil and all that business. How crazy is that? It is our responsibility to guard our hearts and to stay alert so that the things we value most will be sustained through our commitment to God.
We can know with confidence that if God tells us something, it must be so. He has magnified His Word above His name, so we can have every confidence that His Word is true. The devil is God’s enemy, and because unity is the Lord’s trademark and marriages are high on His priority list, the devil seeks to destroy them. When we guard our hearts, our eyes are wide open to the enemy’s tricks and devices. Understand that you are his target and getting you to take your focus off God and away from His Word is the enemy’s game. It’s the negative thoughts you think about yourself or your partner. It’s things like pettiness and jealousy that cause you to spiral out of control in your emotions. This is the kind of crazy you want to avoid.
Know that God’s standard is for you to have a loving relationship with a significant and quality person that honors you. And as Jesus Christ tells us in Luke 12:48, to whom much is given, much is required. You are responsible for doing those things that allow God to cover your union. Pray often. Ask God to help you grow in Godliness so that the authority and power of Christ are operating in your own heart. Don’t get crazy with obsessive demands on yourself or on the other person. Let the Lord lead you, so that you will have a relationship that is fulfilling and meaningful to you. And most importantly, humble yourself under God’s mighty hand so that you are flexible to His directives, and He can help you preserve the unity of your bond.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Don’t Get Crazy” written for Crazynlove.com ©2020. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!